When you right-click on a file, one of the options you see is “Open With”. These usually contain what Windows thinks are valid programs to open particular file types. Now, sometimes, when you have bad installers or uninstallers, some programs leave their mark on this context menu. Basically, if you want to clean out this [...]
Windows XP bundles some utilities to take care of common problems. The defragmenter brings scattered data together to boost file access speed. Scandisk checks for and fixes disk errors. Disk Cleanup sweeps unwanted files off your hard drive, and Backup backs up your files. While these utilities do what they claim to do, there are [...]
In Explorer, when using the File > New option, or when right-clicking and selecting New, you get a list of files that you can create, including text documents, folders, images, sounds, Excel spreadsheets, etc. If you want to be able to make new items, such as HTML files or RTF documents, you will have to [...]
Sometimes, we accidently delete the Show Desktop icon in the Quick Launch menu. Although many of us use keyboard shortcut [windows] + d, there are people who still use this in quick launch. You can manually recreate it by creating a file called “Show Desktop.scf”. Open Notepad, and type in the following:
[Shell] [...]
There is a list of hidden devices that do not normally show up in the Device Manager. You can get XP to reveal these devices by either changing a Registry entry, or by creating a batch file to launch the Device Manager with the correct options.
If you’re comfortable with the Registry, open the Registry Editor [...]
Download speeds of Internet are a major concern when you are running on a low speed connection. In order to get over it, we can increase the speed of downloads with a simple registry hack. This trick involves the increase of download connections from the default value. By doing this, the number of Internet download [...]
Safe Mode is an excellent feature in Windows XP which is not used much. But it serves great to perform repairs and other operations which may crash the system. Generally the safe mode can be accessed through BIOS. Now. we can add “Boot into Safe Mode” in your start menu. To do this you require [...]
Windows Explorer can be used to play many tricks to tease your friends. One of them is making your Menu bar vanish or Disappear and again Re-appear. Menu Bar contains all the options of the file and If it is gone it will definitely lead into confusion for the user. The trick can also used [...]
Some messages or notifications on Windows XP and Vista are so annoying. One of them is this "Unread Email Message " . This is often displayed on the Welcome Screen, and Here’s how to get rid of it :
Start the Registry Editor: Start > Run > regedit > [Enter]
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
Right-click on the CurrentVersion key [...]
If you use System Restore, you must have noticed the System Volume Information folders in the root of each of your drives. This folder stores the files used by System Restore. Their sizes can sometime balloon to gigabytes, because System Restore doesn’t delete your older restore points when creating a new one. Moreover, every time [...]
